From the issue dated March 15, 2002
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The New Writers: A Brief AnthologyRELATED STORY: Undergraduates Heed the Writer's Muse
Oregon State University "The Likeness of Spider Keepings," by Max Chaney Oregon State University "Truck Driver Takes to Skies in Lawn Chair," by Adam Cole Susquehanna University "Going Back to El Paso," by Pete Jones Oregon State University "According to Life," by Joshua Lapekas Susquehanna University "On Poinsettia," by Stefanie Wortman University of Missouri at Columbia Untitled, Still By Katie Carman Oregon State University My dad rushes through the door in a mess of fumbling. He carries a faint heartbeat in his arms, and it is fading. Dropping to his knees with a hollow thud, he places the calf on the floor in a heap of towels. I know they are still damp from last night, so I run to the pantry for more rags. By the time I get back, Dad has turned on my mom's old hairdryer and moves it quickly over the half-frozen body. I wrap tiny feet inside one of the scraps of towel and begin to rub. Dad grabs a towel with his other hand and now both of us polish at the body, rubbing off the cold. Then, we are trying to massage life back into the skin, wanting to push it in like spices. We work like midnight witches, trying to make something alive with the touch of our hands. I try to send every bit of my body heat out through my fingers. I imagine they have magic in them. I know they can bring back life. We work until the skin beneath our hands throbs with warmth, until we think we can feel blood stir beneath the hide, mixing in curry and thyme. Dad tells me to go to bed. I did a good job, but I have school tomorrow. He will take care of the rest. The next morning I tiptoe into the back room in my pajamas to see if our spell has worked. I am quiet. I don't want to wake it. It will need its sleep. It must be tired. It must be very tired. I am afraid to look. I pull back the edge of a towel with two careful fingers and the calf's body shudders. He is dreaming. His hair is dry and warm, and he will not remember that he dropped from the warm inside of his mother into the belly of a ditch last night. He will not know that someone crawled into the icy water to save him, and that Dad and I were heroes together last night. Another day, I push my face into my dad's chest and scared tears leave dark smudges on the pocket of his t-shirt. Today, in a sweeping mad fit, I lost my bearings and shut my middle finger in our front door as I thrashed into the house. The pain of it made me drop to the floor. Now, I can feel my heartbeat in the tip of my hand. The pressure can't stay. We have to drill a tiny hole in the middle of my nail to let the blood out. Dad tucks me into the bend of his arm so that I don't have to see. And, as my mom squints, gently twisting a syringe needle until it grinds through solid to liquid, he and I both close our eyes. Now, we're out feeding cattle. Covered with hay, I crawl into the flatbed pickup. Another atmosphere exists in here, one of Copenhagen and sweet alfalfa. So much hay has gone through the lungs of this flatbed that it breathes out bits of dry grass when Dad turns on the heater. Is it next week or next year? I can't remember. I look at my father, noticing that his middle has thickened a little. He's quit chewing tobacco and started sucking on spearmint candies. Bits of sweet-smelling plastic have invaded our house like Morning Glory, blooming with a quiet squeak as he pulls at both ends of the wrapper. It is August 3rd, 1993. With a click and a slip of heavy metal that wasn't supposed to happen, the unthinkable happens. My father's watch keeps ticking without him. It is three weeks before my twelfth birthday. My sister runs screaming to the house. Six years later my mom remarries and I start having the same dream again and again. I ask Dad where he's been. Why where you gone for so long? He has no answer. He doesn't seem to understand. I tell him that he's been gone for some time, and his face contorts. Gone for years. He hugs me and I cry into the pocket of his t-shirt. I cry because I do not know how to tell my dad that we've had to put our memories of him on the shelves in the back of our brains, and that we are different people now without him. Familiar strangers with the same dark eyes. I know my Dad's favorite color was blue and that he always ate his ice cream with chocolate syrup and powdered malt mixed in, but not what he would say about my transferring schools after only a semester. What would he say about my short hair? Would he still think I want to play softball for a living? Be a catcher? What would he say about my spending a summer in Ecuador, where I walked by a guard with a rifle every day on my way to Spanish class? The guard was just one of many men to make the noises of hungry tiger as I passed by. Sometimes, I picture myself having coffee with my dad. He wears a red Hanes t-shirt, Levis, and white tube socks. I wear my grown-up skin. I know he will go to the kitchen and pour hot coffee into a mug that says American Agra-Insurance on the outside. He will pour it when it's barely done brewing and hot as lava, then I will hear the sound of him digging in the freezer. I know that we will sit in the living room that someone else now rents from us, and he will drink his coffee black with a cube of ice, sitting half cross-legged, one foot tucked under a leg, one foot flat on the floor. I know he will have something to say to me. Something to ask. Something to tell. But what? The Likeness of Spider Keepings By Max Chaney Oregon State University You're patient with that gnat, unsettled Peeling corners hid you acceptably, Kindly so, disguising hairy old man Legs in this closet and cot combo. Are you comfortable even when I watch? You don't look dragonish Crouched up, panicked. Go hawkish to the imp and hook, Retract his lake of blood. But you won't; Hunting calm, you'll wait. You've set timing better than Morning commuter buses. Greed lacks your passion; You know dinner will be more filling Than a Spanish Mother's catering. Now he's still, Cesspool still. Thrust and wind him in sticky chains And silk till he curdles, Perfection from your tiny acidic Bite. Could I use that tactic to Hold someone here? Nature's copyright Scarcely can be violated. Our Pleasures lack patience like yours, wicked Companion. Venom and appetite Serves you well this hour, but greed Little one, will get us next Tuesday. Truck Driver Takes to Skies in Lawn Chair By Adam Cole Susquehanna University "A truck driver with 45 weather balloons rigged toI. On the Road "'Since I was 13 years old, I've dreamed of goingMy dream starts with a straight, black road (so there's your reason it floods back to me like tide over and over). End of the road a church, but tiny, like a shed. My little legs pump down the street despite the tar- coated asphalt. Soon my Sunday shoes are ripped from my feet. Then my feet. The sticky road, said and done, takes everything -- ankles, knees, body all the way to my neck -- I'm just a head floating like a road sign now. (Of course this is night.) Next my noggin inflates, beginning slowly and shooting up giant-size with the speed of a pebble dropped from way high, and suddenly I'm floating, coasting through the air and looking back at my church clothes, tarred and empty, dropping away from me like buildings. II. Inspiration I "Walters... had two friends untether the craft, whichNow that I'm up here, drifting down, I get it -- weather balloons in a surplus store: the cosmic joke of my life, like God's costume is camo. But going so high is the opposite of jungle -- the air thin, face free of bugs, my sweat freezing. Of course Vietnam taught fear, but this so entirely different -- instead of dropping into my body, every sensation times a hundred, the fear makes it try to float apart like the air, tingling and numb. Oh, the joke: from the front seat of the truck nothing is sensible, cities and countrysides thrown together, like an oil slick on a driveway. Up in the air the city is ordered, the streets carve patterns, blocks tied to blocks. Far away, single colored fields on the horizon. Somewhere to the east, desert. West and south, ocean. And north: Angeles National Forest, mountainous green I can barely see. God, if I could say what it feels like -- moving without movement, the whole flat face of the world falling, the giant vacuum of wind the earth pulled with it. Just the opposite of road rushing at you. The height: small planes passing, and I didn't stop until suddenly I was floating. The sun was pouring on me without any heat. Hands don't stand that for long, so I had to shoot the balloons. Cold and stiff, they dropped the pellet gun -- I drifted down slowly until feeling came back, until I could breathe, until the streets were no longer skinny pencil lines and the spots under me were children, pointing and staring. III. Angeles National Forest "Walters died Oct. 6 after hiking to a remote spot in Angeles National Forest and shooting himself in the heart."Undulation -- a word I learned after flight someone taught me when I tried to describe the trees on the mountains. But down here must be what that word really is: wind through the pines, during summer everything is movement. Cities fall back into mess but trees never stray from the only thing they can be: trees. I got rid of that rig so fast -- it never fit me anyways, no matter how many hours I spent in the seat, but when it was gone I couldn't bear being around people always. And then, swaying back and forth between lonely and alone, I went to the mountains more. When they asked, I told them nature and I get along real well. Of course. But nature does nothing after-dream -- if you've been above the trees, free in the wind, you know there are no trees but tree, giant mass of tree, nothing a person can ever get close to. Even without the leaves the sun is warm now, November. I keep thinking of the popped balloons and what it must be like -- spreading out into the sky, feeling the sun in every little bit, becoming a part of the clouds, dropping back into the ocean time after time. Going Back to El Paso By Pete Jones Oregon State University Juan had only been to Juarez once or twice since his parents had made it across the border when he was an infant. From the interstate he had seen the puddled dirt streets, streets that remained muddy with the spillage of broken pipes in spite of the blazing, late-summer sun. Interstate-10 ran parallel to the border for about a two-mile stretch; to the north were the red and yellow fast-food joints, lush irrigated golf courses, pastel stucco subdivisions, Spanish tile roofs, and manicured lawns of El Paso. To the south were the mosquito-infested mud roads, scrap-lumber shacks patched with road signs, and wooden-palette animal pens of Juarez. The pillars of smoke that arose from the town’s scattered piles of burning garbage made this stretch of highway look like the edge of a holocaust, a bombing that years ago might have desolated Juarez but left El Paso untouched and starkly beautiful. The truck pulled away from the little restaurant where Juan had picked up the old Mexican woman and her grandchildren. It rambled northward on the main street of Juarez, a dirt road that eventually became paved highway that led over the river and into El Paso. The old woman and her grandson sat in the back of the truck as Juan weaved his way through the potholes of the muddy street. The little girl sat in the cab with Juan, silently staring, just able to see out her window above the door. She had fair skin, light brown hair, features that would allow her to cross the border without questions from the guards. Juan glanced around the street and saw the deserted shops an markets. A cat scurried in and out of his way, dodging and flicking at flies that orbited its head. The border was almost visible in the distance. The city of El Paso sat perched atop the concrete walls of Interstate 10. Juan had never seen the two cities from this side of the border. El Paso seemed to be a palace on a hill, the interstate and the border a great wall, the Rio Grande a shallow moat. Juan pointed to the hills and houses appearing through the wavy heat above the interstate, "That's El Paso. America," he said. The little girl continued to stare out her side window. Juan was not sure if she could understand English, or if she was deaf. He reached over and poked her shoulder, "America," he said as he pointed toward the border. The young girl did not turn to look at Juan. She stayed focused out the window, to the east, past the shops and vendors, at the barren outskirts of Juarez. Juan grew annoyed at her disinterest and did not yet notice the whelming black cloud approaching the truck. It billowed through the alleys and side streets like a mist that blows in from the sea, the forerunner of a hurricane that cannot be stopped. The black cloud loomed for a moment before it sped toward the little girl's window. Only when a tiny green grasshopper flew into the cab and landed on Juan's thigh did he turn and notice the swarm. He flopped toward the light-skinned little girl and frantically rolled up her window. The first of the grasshoppers lightly clicked as they bounced off the fenders and glass. Juan saw the eye of the cloud begin to overtake the truck, the clicking becoming a deafening clatter of smashed heads and thoraxes, of cracking, oozing exoskeletons. The little girl had turned away from her side window, now covered in a green and yellow slime, and stared ahead at the windshield. Her eyes followed a peculiar random pattern as her head rolled up and down and to the side. She did not seem to notice the storm all around her, but was intent on something. Juan leaned over and studied her delicate profile, pinkened white skin set against a background of yellow splatters and chunks of green. He slowly became aware of her careful concentration, her focus. Juan followed the direction of her gaze to the windshield and noticed a single grasshopper on the outside. It fluttered its wings and lighted on the slanted glass, dropping to the wipers, walking amongst the parts and fluids of its swarm. The pale yellow, almost white underbelly of the solitary grasshopper appeared on the windshield like a single star finding its way through the clouds of a terrible thunderstorm, illuminating nothing. As quickly as it had appeared, the grasshopper bounced up the windshield and disappeared over the roof of the truck Through the splatters of organs and juices Juan found a clearing on the glass. Through the gap he saw El Paso. The city’s bright houses and manicured lawns were clouded by the haze on the windshield. The city towered there, above the border and the river. It once stood as a fortress lording over Juarez, looking down at the tiny border town and its people and its poverty. Now that image was vaguely visible. It appeared propped up, held together, through the blood and life of the swarm. According to Life By Joshua Lapekas Susquehanna University In March of 1958, four months after Sputnik began its first ninety-six minute orbit around the earth, Life magazine ran a series-story called Crisis In American Education. Two sixteen-year-old boys were featured on the cover. Exclusive Pictures of a Russian Schoolboy Versus His US Counterpart, it reads above their juxtaposed photographs. The Russian, Alexei Kutzkov, frowns beneath a soot-streak moustache. His shoulders disappear beneath an armor of fur. But sitting now without this reference, I can't recall much else about Alexei. Each time I've faced these two boys my focus has perched upon the American. I've studied his grin, a white picket fence, followed the swell of his acne-blemished cheeks, and stared at his James Dean leather jacket, half-zipped over a wool sweater. This is Stephen Lapekas of Chicago, Illinois. He is a vestige of the battle Life lost to television in 1972, a faded reflection of my nineteen-year-old self. He is my father. Life journalists spent two weeks analyzing and recording every available aspect of these two boys' lives. Jane Hernandez, a senior writer for the magazine, and photographer Tony Jenkins sat at the back of all my father's classes, periods one through six. While Hernandez took down notes with the grace and efficiency of a courtroom stenographer, Jenkins snapped a picture each time their subject raised his hand. "My teachers were too nervous not to ask only easy questions, and I was the one always picked," my dad once told me. "For fourteen days the Russians made me a genius." In March, one month later, the article was published. "Stephen Lapekas of Chicago," it begins, "starts out every school day by meeting his high school steady, Penny Donahue, and heading for Austin High. Ten minutes later he gets to Typing II class, slips behind a large electric typewriter and another pleasant school day begins." A photograph of my father adjusting the tabulator, staring at the Underwood as if at a lab specimen: "I type about a word a minute," he jokes. On the next page, a shot of my dad walking back from a blackboard graffitied with crude geometry, biting his lip to keep from laughing: "Stephen amuses the class with his ineptitude," the caption says, while the words under Alexei's pictures read things like, "Here Alexei labors with keen concentration upon a car motor in shop class," or "When not reading Tolstoy or Chekov, Alexei can be found playing fervent games of chess with classmates." What the article omitted was my father's real passion: Basketball. He led The Buzzards in rebounds for three straight seasons. I've inherited just shades of his envied athleticism. His physique. His good looks. I am more like Alexei: clumsy, thin, in love with literature, and reliant upon luck to put balls into their respective holes. Once I joked with my father about this genetic mismatch. "If you were anything like him... " he began, but the rest of his thought just hung there like a neck in a noose. One day after school, when I was fifteen, I brought the issue down from the attic (where he keeps it at the bottom of a cardboard box among some old issues of Time and National Geographic) so I could prove to a friend that my father had indeed appeared on the cover and so I could claim the five dollars he had bet against my assertion. I was caught when he came into my room without knocking. He had warned me about showing it to anyone. "It's time for Damian to go home," he said as he bent down to pick up this yellow-paged piece of himself. "What's his problem?" Damian asked as the attic door sighed open in the hall. "My dad hasn't even been in the newspaper." My father is now an airline pilot for TWA with a year left before he turns sixty and is forced to retire. He met my mother in the seventies when she was a stewardess for the same airline, before she quit to stay at home and raise me. She had stories. People she met. OJ Simpson once asked her on a date during a trip to Vegas, to which she (thank God) said no; and Sonny Bono once called her the prettiest girl at 30,000 feet. My father saw her with the same eyes. They were married one month after she brought him coffee in the cockpit for the first time and commented over the curls of steam, "I wish all flyboys were as cute as you." After two years they fell out of lust. In another four, my mom told me, they fell out of love. It was that simple. But for eighteen years they stayed married. Then flyboy flew away and the prettiest girl at thirty thousand feet received custody. My father was on the edge of retirement. No one knew what should come next. The only things that seem real anymore: Their arguments over the phone, my visits to his apartment, and this magazine which I've brought down from the attic again after three years. I wonder where Penny is today when I turn to the photograph of her and my dad walking hand-in-hand through suburban Chicago. My mother cried when she heard they danced at his reunion. This was a few months ago in November. He gave me the details over dinner. They talked at the bar between songs, my father about their senior prom, his hand around a beer, and Penny about being lonely, her hand around him. They had the whole night. What was Sputnik? What was shame? On Poinsettia By Stefanie Wortman University of Missouri at Columbia They have some reputation, unlucky things. Of course the name almost contains its poison. Really they're innocents, harmless, those sacramentally cream-and-scarlets. You could eat them all day and feel about the same as if you'd eaten the paper they're printed on to wrap the dolls and blocks and replicated weapons for all the blanket-sleepered darlings. Despite the rumors, they are the sweethearts of Christmas parties, but horticulturally speaking, they are tricky bitches, require the deception of a darkened room, so unlike damned mums, those indiscriminate bloomers.
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